AVIAN Singer Lance King

AVIAN Singer Lance King Explains Why He Parted Ways With PYRAMAZE


Brian Rademacher from Rockeyez.com spoke to AVIAN singer Lance King (ex-PYRAMAZE/ex-BALANCE OF POWER) recently about a number of topics for a forthcoming feature. Here is an excerpt from the chat:

www.Rockeyez.com: Pyramaze was such a good band why did you leave?
King: "When I was first asked to listen to the demo’s of this band by their manager, I liked the tracks, I heard a lot of promise in this new band. Michael (Kammeyer - guitar) was extremely happy to work with a known vocalist. I was at this time basically a hired gun. As the album came together I became more excited about the band and it’s possibilities and committed to promoting the band and did so through Nightmare Records. Being able to promote the band through Nightmare gave me the resources and time to promote the album. However wearing two hats like this doesn’t always bring unity in a band. Unfortunately this usually will create a problem in that, other band members will see you as making money when they aren’t, regardless of how much effort and money your putting into helping their career.

As time went on, the band wanted to make me a permanent member, with that comes a re-negotiation, part of that negotiation was that they expected me to pay a portion of money for our monthly Management fee. I felt this fee was ridiculous for a couple reasons, mainly because every other agreement for management I’d ever seen or been offered was either a flat fee or a set percentage, this deal was both. I didn’t want to pay for something that I had more resources for and was already doing for the band for free. This example and that of just the difference in experience on many levels, probably got in the way of me being an equal member in this band.
The bands manager had originally introduced us, in the end ironically, he may have been the one that put the nail in the coffin, likely because he didn’t appreciate my not wanting the band to continue using his services. However from the beginning this was always Michael’s band, that was clear, and after his confidence grew with the success we were having, I wasn’t so “special” in his eyes anymore.

I will always be proud of what we did together. I was incredibly motivated to make the band work, I travelled to Europe for festivals and tours. I promoted the band continuously with my time and money. However because of the rounded amount of experiences I’ve had, and this being the first real band for most of the members of Pyramaze, we were clearly on different levels, but with me now having a more vested interest and wanting to share my ideas. That aspect brought some disagreements between Michael and I on business decisions. Music we always agreed on, but when you add in a third opinion in the mix when there are already issues (the bands manager), it can make things even more complicated, especially when the manager and the rest of the band are living on the other side of the world.

In the long run what tore me from the band was probably a combination of cultural difference, a variance in our ages in regards to our perspectives and a manager that wanted to justify his role and pay-check by interjecting his opinion when it wasn’t always needed.

But to get to the real heart of it, at a key moment, two days before our set at ProgPowerUSA in 2006, when we were meeting up for our first rehearsal for the show, there was something that came up that was destined to rip us apart. This was facilitated I believe by our manager Claus Jensen of Intromental, but trickled down to each of the other members like a virus.

What was this virus? A misguided belief that something Michael and I had chosen to do for our show was not going to work.

This part of the show was about my son playing a violin intro from our newest album for our show at ProgPowerUSA, as the character of “the Bone Carver. Playing the intro from The Legend Of The Bone Carver album because by coincidence, Tomy my son (at eleven years old), totally looked like the bone carver character on our album art work. And since he’d done the voice of the Bone Carver on the album we wanted to include him into the show somehow. We’d been talking about ways to expound on the story line of the album and make our set something special and stick out from the rest of the sets at ProgPowerUSA. I discussed with Michael, about my idea to have Tomy, as The Bone Carver open the show on the violin playing the main theme that opens the album. Michael loved the idea and we emailed back and forth developing how we wanted it to flow.

This all happened about 40 days before the show, the next month I spent a lot of time and money on an electric violin, a custom made outfit for Tomy, and flights for my family to come to Atlanta. Also the band needed a new stage banner, so I designed one and had it made. My label Nightmare was also paying for a seven camera DVD shoot of our set there. So now two days before the PPUSA show in Atlanta ( the first day we are to rehearse together) before we even strike a note, the band wants to pull my son’s violin intro….. saying their reason for this was simply, 'they thought the crowd would laugh at the band and that this would be reflected poorly later on in the prog power forums.' No other explanation or rationalization was given to me, I tried to reassure the guys that I knew this audience, I’d played this fest and frequented it when I wasn’t an artist playing. I was an American and I knew these people and knew they would not respond the way my foreign friends were thinking…but the band was not budging on it.

I was devastated! I felt extremely let down. After I made it through rehearsal, I spent the next day trying to wrap myself around how I was going to tell my son he couldn’t play, we went out to explore “Underground Atlanta” and my son jumps up on one of the empty street stages, and say’s Hey Dad, check it out, and starts pretending to play the intro on his air violin humming our opening theme. I felt nauseous.

After a lot of thought, I came to the conclusion that this was a line that shouldn’t have been crossed. What I said to the band after an extremely sleepless night was '…If you pull this intro for this reason, I don’t think I can be emotionally into this band anymore, and if I’m not emotionally into this band, I likely won’t be financially into it either.' Reluctantly the band agreed to this, I knew my time was probably limited by saying this, but they had crossed a line that should not have been crossed by friends or professionals.

We went out and played a great set, and had an incredible response from the audience, everything should have been great right? Wrong…you have to realize I wasn’t the only one upset. My wife who was still sort of in shock with a band that she had really liked until they messed with her son. She felt it was time to deflate their stage high and let them have a little taste of how nasty the last couple days had been for us. That was enough to get me fired, she scared the shit out of those Viking Danes.

Two months later, I received an email from Michael ejecting me from the band, here is probably the reason it took so long…. in this email he clearly asked me to keep the news of my being fired quiet, they didn’t want anyone to know about this until “After” the release of the PPUSA DVD that the band still expected me to spend my money on developing and releasing after just being fired. That was a hard pill to swallow, how was I supposed to move on professionally or artistically when daily I would have to field questions about the band in both personal and business communications, having to pretend I was still in the band. I told Michael I’d get back to him on his letter shortly.

I pondered the situation and decided it was time to move on, I drafted a Press release and sent it out letting the world know we had parted ways and I wished them well, I didn’t want to wait and write one with Michael, it was over and I didn’t think he was going to make that press release a priority.

We had a great response from the audience that final performance, it was truly the best we had EVER seen from a crowd, with Bloodstock being the closest contender. Every nuance of our last show as a band at PPUSA is on raw DVD footage that I have and own the masters of.

I’m proud of the music we made together, I’m proud of our performances we did, I’m proud of the fact that I promoted this band to the level that a singer like Matt Barlow (ICED EARTH) would want to come out of metal retirement for!"

Read more soon at Rockeyez.com.